The present invention relates to a technique capable of facilitating to share setting data in binary format of a specific format for a specific type of an electronic device between a plurality of devices through a communication network. Particularly, the present invention relates to an electronic device, system, method and computer-readable storage medium capable of realizing such facilitated sharing of setting data.
When a user operates to generate musical sounds or tones from an electronic device such as an electronic musical instrument, the user sometimes wants to generate the musical sounds or tones in the same manner as musical sounds or tones capable of generating by another device. In this case, the user certainly needs to prepare corresponding music data for his or her own device, and furthermore to set up a performance environment that involves various musical performance for controlling the musical sound or tone such as tempo, beat, or effect in the same way as the other device. When the user wants to reflect the performance environment that is set for the other device to the own device, the user have to take a lot of time to set up the similar performance environment to the other device on the own device; however, the set-up operation is very burdensome to the user. Specifically, a beginner user does not know what operation the user needs to begin with.
Thus, a system that can share performance environment setting data for musical sound control between plural devices (also referred to as registration data, and hereinafter merely referred to as “setting data”) are known in conventional arts. In the system disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3726712, which is referred to as “Patent Literature 1” hereinafter, and Japanese Patent No. 4766142, which is referred to as “Patent Literature 2” hereinafter, for example, the user can arbitrarily register (upload) setting data in MIDI format, which is produced on the basis of user's setting of the performance environment, in a server device on a communication network such as the Internet or a local area network (LAN), while the user can selectively retrieve (download) desired setting data from the server device which has been registered by the other users in the server device. Thus, the conventional art accomplishes the sharing of the setting data by transmitting and receiving the setting data in the MIDI data format between plural devices. It is necessary for the server device to be a dedicated server device capable of handling directly setting data in a special format such as MIDI data.
When the user is going to register (upload) the setting data having been set in his or her own device to the dedicated server device or to acquire (download), from the dedicated server device, the setting data having been registered (uploaded) by the other user in the dedicated server device, the user have to have the own device accessible to the dedicated server device. However, the conventional art was based on one-to-one data distribution through the dedicated server device, and therefore the user had to perform the access operation to the dedicated server device such as entry of an ID and a password each time when the user wants to register and/or acquire the setting data, and it was a burdensome task to the user. In addition, the user had to input suitable search criteria by trial and error in order to seek out desired setting data from a number of setting data having been registered in the dedicated server device.